This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Rooms designed to pass through are often strange, transient places that, sometimes, become a real place. Take the grand hall at Union Station, a cavernous room that could have been designed so that nobody would take notice of it, but instead it’s the most beautiful and elegant way to leave the city, as if Toronto was saying to people walking to their train, “hey, don’t forget about me.”

At Yonge St. and Eglinton Ave. there’s a room trying to do the same thing. Deep inside the Yonge Eglinton Centre complex, behind the Indigo bookstore, a central court connects offices, apartment buildings and two floors of retail together. A big open unremarkable space, like so many malls have, but this one was recently renovated to be something more.

What was once a drab space is quite colourful now. Really colourful: plastic light boxes are mounted throughout, covering the pillars that hold up the building. They undulate, changing colour like so many things do now with the advent of LED lighting technology. One moment lime green, the next a pastel shade of lavender. Some walls are covered in TV screens like a deconstructed Jumbotron. On a recent visit it was flashing an ad for Cuba sun vacations, the message clearly suggesting there’s someplace else you’d rather be.

Plastic light boxes covering the pillars that hold up the building are constantly changing colour. (Shawn Micallef)

I used to pass through this space a few times a week when I first moved to Toronto 15 years ago. I worked at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind on Bayview Ave. and at lunch I had just enough time to walk down to Eglinton and catch one of the buses to Yonge, wander around for 20 minutes, and then head back to work. I had just moved to the big city and wanted a big city lunch hour. Yonge and Eglinton provided.

Article Continued Below

Back then there was a Chapters bookstore as well as the Indigo to choose from. Biography sections are a great friend to those looking for lunch hour distraction as the captioned pictures can be consumed quickly, a brief glimpse of the arc of somebody’s life and times before returning to work.

All of this was attached to the subway by underground passageways complete with a moving sidewalk that led to Canada Square on the southwest corner. There a glass box — maybe the original glass box in Toronto — capped the entrance to the Eglinton subway station, the final stop on the original stretch of the 1954 Yonge line.

Sometimes even up at street level those with a keen sense of smell will detect a waft or two of Cinnabon coming up the stairs and the shop inside the station is one of Toronto’s great olfactory landmarks, something commuters notice as they rush to the bus platforms upstairs.

On some walls are TV screens are arranged like a deconstructed Jumbotron. (Shawn Micallef)

Retail scientists certainly study the smell-to-purchase ratio, but those buns had at least one utilitarian purpose: a blind colleague of mine at the CNIB told me that when she lost count of stations, this being the not-too-distant past when the TTC steadfastly resisted calling out station names over the subway PA, the smell of the Cinnabons when the doors opened was a last second reminder to alight there to catch the Eglinton bus.

The old bus bays, each with their own staircase up, had a light at each door that indicated to commuters if the bus was there waiting, a bit of analogue civilization that prevented untold thousands of panicked sprints over the years.

The bus platforms are now moved to an internal cavity of Canada Square and the empty bus bay area on Eglinton is set to be developed. It’s one to watch: with the redevelopment of the Yonge Eglinton Centre, the square that was on the northwest corner is gone now, and the colourful space inside doesn’t much encourage people to linger, despite the Jumbotron.

Not every place is Union Station, and Yonge Eglinton Centre may not achieve its ambitions, but every nowhere is a somewhere to somebody. Especially at lunch hour.

Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com